'Serial' Popularity Spawns Local Best Buy Tourism

Since October a remarkable chunk of a podcasting nation has been playing amateur sleuth, discussing phone calls, debating plausible timelines and generally losing their minds over the highly popular Serial.

According to The Huffington Post’s Jillian Berman, fans are now taking part in a bit of tourism, traveling to see the Maryland Best Buy featured in the docu-podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig.

For the few who are not familiar, Serial is a podcast that concentrates on one story over an entire season, leaving fans of the show to wait until Thursday before unwrapping their long-awaited audio surprise.

While the popularity of the show is garnering fantastic buzz, the subject matter is anything but positive.

As Berman relays, the non-fictional story centers on the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee and the conviction of her former boyfriend Adnan Syed.

As Syed continues to sit in a Maryland correctional cell the growing masses in the know have been consumed by this real-life crime drama.

So much so, as Berman writes, that a store in the area is now getting a flood of visitors:

“Now fans are apparently coming to the store location to see for themselves, Jeff Shelman, a Best Buy spokesman, told The Huffington Post. So many people have inquired about the phone that the general manager of the store, who hadn't heard of ‘Serial’ until people started coming in to ask about it, has started listening, Shelman said.”

They come to see about a pay phone that may or may not have existed. They come to gawk at a macabre setting. They come, one presumes, to put some visual context to a highly captivating auditory narrative.

The show is so popular that its host recently chatted things up on The Colbert Report. Here is a Comedy Central clip that features an interview between Stephen Colbert and Koenig. In the interview the two discuss the impetus behind the show as well as the comical pronunciation of Mail Chimp, the show’s advertiser.

What wasn’t mentioned is how some fans sate their curiosity. Things are far more accessible than they once were, which means many can view the locations in question without ever hopping a plane.

The following YouTube video actually takes fans on a ride along, hitting various spots mentioned in the show.

This one follows “The Drive” that was mentioned in the show’s fifth episode:

With podcast popularity comes macabre tourism. Berman mentions that the Yelp for this particular Best Buy has a comment directed at the show: “The top review on a Yelp page for the Best Buy location is simply a reference to the show: ‘Parking lot is secluded enough, but I couldn't find the pay phone.’” Though it seems that comment may have been deleted.

And, as Berman notes, Reddit has a lengthy debate over whether there was ever a pay phone at the Best Buy, something crucial to the narrative.

So a wildly popular show about a true crime has now spilled over into rather peculiar intrigue with fans traveling to see for themselves the locations that are increasingly familiar—like inanimate celebrities having their 15 minutes of tourism.

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